Category — Social media

Are you conservative, friendly, open or promiscuous?

People use social media sites to network online in different ways, and you can classify them in roughly four categories.

Conservative: If you’re a conservative networker online, you’ll connect only to people you know in real life. It might even be just the people you know well and like.

Friendly: You’ll connect to people you know or have at least met in real life, even if it was only on a conference call, regardless of how well you know them.

Open: You’ll connect to anybody you’ve had some sort of contact with, online or off, even if the contact was as limited as following their tweets (or them following yours).

Promiscuous: You’ll connect to anybody, even complete strangers. You’re always looking for an excuse to send that invitation to link, always willing to accept one.

Ex-conservative becoming more promiscuous

Over time, I’ve progressed from the conservative end of this spectrum to promiscuous.  Why? Because it’s on that wide-open end of the spectrum that online social networking is so powerful.

Here’s what I mean. On the conservative end of the scale, where you’re connected to a relatively small number of people who you already know pretty well, social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook aren’t that much more useful than Microsoft Outlook. They give you a way to keep in touch electronically with people you already know, but that’s about it.

But as you make your online network wider and deeper, it becomes more and more difficult, and eventually impossible, to have the kind of personal relationship with each individual that you had when you were conservative. The connections in these broader networks are looser, the personal communication increasingly infrequent, the relationships weaker. But they are still connections, still relationships.

You can send out your status updates, pass along a useful link, maybe ask a question. Most of the people in your loose network may not pay a lot of attention, most of the time, but your status update — your ping to your network — is a way of maintaining at least a weak connection, but without being intrusive. Everyone is opted in. Anybody can opt out.

Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter, our blogs and the rest of the social media universe allow you to maintain more relationships at a greater distance, something that wouldn’t be practical for most of us offline.

Why would you want to maintain these weak relationships? Because when you need something (like a job), or want to know something (like an obscure piece of technical information) or have an idea you want to spread (maybe about the value of social networks and ‘weak’ relationships), you can tug the strings in your network and get more feedback than you ever could in your conservative real world network. Even though those connections are weak, if you ask the network for help, at least some people will respond.

So I’m becoming more promiscuous online. Want to follow me on Twitter? Go here. Want to connect to me on LinkedIn? I welcome it, find me here. Feel like friending me on Facebook? I’m friendly - go for it.

What about you? Are you a conservative networker online, or a prolific and promiscuous connector? Tell us about your online networking style, and why you’ve chosen that style, in the comments below.

Yesterday I tweeted about Fast Company’s Buzz blog launching a service that allows people to vote story pitches up or down, similar to the way blog posts, stories and other items are voted up or down on Digg. This morning the launch was announced officially. Buzz blogger Francisco Dao wrote (in part):

Since Fast Company Buzz looks for companies that are breaking new ground and changing the game, I believe it’s only right that FC Buzz also looks to break new ground. The pitch portal taps into true social media by letting everyone vote and pitch on what should be covered.  All the pitches and votes are open to see, so just posting a story idea will get you exposure.

Traditionally pitching has been a one-on-one thing between the PR person doing the pitching and the journalist making the decision about whether to pursue the story. This changes the game.

First, it raises the bar for pitches. Put together a bad, off-target pitch for Fast Company Buzz and lots of other people will see it, so you don’t want to do anything that’s embarrassing. We’ve seen some bloggers publish some of the more embarrassingly bad pitches they receive, but now all the pitches to Buzz will be visible.

Second, I also wonder if it won’t lead to people trying to game the system. (Francisco, want to weigh in here? Are there systems in place to prevent gaming?)

What do you think? Will other media outlets or blogs start using a system like this to evaluate the interest readers have in different story pitches?

Twitter is quick and easy and more than a little addictive. It’s tempting to post tweets about every little detail, regardless of whether anybody cares. Please don’t.

Like many things online, a little extra effort goes along way on Twitter. And like most social media sites, the key to being a good Twitter user is to provide value through your tweets.

So, here are ten do’s and don’ts for providing more value for your followers and those you follow. (Note: If the only people following you are your close friends and family, then feel free to tweet about whatever you want. But if you have a lot of people following you who don’t know in real life, these guidelines will help you make a better impression.)

Don’t …

• say ‘good morning’, ‘good night’, or ‘I need coffee’ or otherwise provide us with the blow-by-blow mundane details of your life. Everyone’s life has those details, and none of us need to know about them in your life. If you don’t have something to say on Twitter, don’t say anything.
• respond to others with tweets that don’t add to the conversation, such as “me too” or “neat.” Again, the rule here is to figure out how to add value — some insight, more information, a humorous, engaging or interesting tweet. There is one exception to this rule: If something really tragic happens to someone (like a death in the family) and you express your sympathy, support and positive thoughts to someone through Twitter, that’s good. People in difficult situations need encouragement and support, so that’s providing value, even if it’s just as tweet that says “So sorry to hear the sad news. I’m thinking of you.”
• deluge people with tweets every five minutes. We probably don’t need to know that much. There might be a few situations, such as when you’re Twittering a conference panel or something, where this would be OK. But most of the time, concentrate more on quality and less on quantity.
• offer links only to your own blog post but ignore everyone else’s. It’s fine to self-promote with Twitter, provided that’s not the only thing you’re doing and you’re willing to promote others’ work.
• be too clever with instant messaging acronyms. Sure, IM lingo is useful when you’re trying to get a tweet down to 140 characters. But don’t make yourself hard to understand for all those people who don’t know what acronyms like LOL or BFF or OMG mean.

Do …

• point people toward useful and interesting links — other tweets, web sites, blog posts, etc. Make sure you provide enough information to also give people an idea of what they might find at that link and why it’s worth their time.
• converse — respond to others’ questions, give suggestions, point out resources, etc. Twitter is not just a one-way broadcast service; it’s about conversations. So start them and participate in them.
• ask questions. You need answers, other people like to help, so ask questions. When you get answers, don’t forget to say thank you.
• tell people something surprising and interesting about yourself. While mundane details about your life (‘headed home now’) aren’t very interesting, telling people something unusual or interesting or engaging can be. So look for chances to reveal, appropriately, interesting tidbits. Just finished your first triathlon and did the bike portion on a unicycle? That’s worth Twittering.
• break news. Did something newsworthy happen near you? Mention it. Did you just see the first alert of some breaking news event flash across your favorite news web site, or even the TV screen? Twitter it.

I’m sure I’ve broken every one of these guidelines, but I’m trying to improve. What are your best tips for being a better Twitterer? Please leave them in the comments.

I’ve got a whole bunch of good links for your mid-week browsing. Here we go:

1. Blogging: Add TwitterCounter to your blog to display how many people are following you on Twitter. I’ve added it over on the left, under the “Connect to Me” section.

2. Marketing: Price vs. customer service, which is more important? MarketingSherpa has a great chart that shows that companies often care more about customer service than price from their vendors. Losing customers? Maybe your pricing isn’t the problem. Maybe you need to take a good long look at your customer service. By the way, think about the implications for blogs, which are free to readers: The quality of what you provide to your readers, how you treat them, and how responsive you are to any comments or emails they send you may well determine how loyal they are.

3. Social media: Angela Connor is the community manager at WRAL.com here in North Carolina. She’s got a really cool blog foused on managing online communities, an increasingly important topic. Check it out.

4. Online marketing: Chris Brogan takes a look at how we can define the spectrum of social media marketing efforts, from banner ads at one end to dialogue between businesses and their customers. This helps to frame the slippery question of what should we do if we want to use social media marketing.

5. Writing: Copyblogger has links to two free teleclasses on copywriting and marketing. Free — so go forth and learn.

6. Social media: The Caffeinated Blog has eight tips for using StumbledUpon effectively. By the way, I love this blog’s name and wish I had thought of it first. But the blogger, Kari Rippetoe, has great content and is worth subscribing to. (And you can Stumble this post if you like — there’s a link at the bottom to make it easy.)

7. Management and career: Jeremiah points out that when you hire someone, you also get their network, including their online network. That can pose challenges for businesses, but it also brings opportunities. This is not a new idea, and applies to offline networks as well as online networks. In The Tom Peters Seminar, Peters describes the modern corporation as a Rolodex (the book was published in ‘94, in the early days of the consumer Internet). The more experienced I get as a professional, the more I think that a greater and greater portion of my value as an employee comes from my existing network and my ability to nurture and grow that network. How are you working on your network?

8. Values: Christopher Penn reminds us that, to quote Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” What are you using your powers of marketing and communications for?

A couple of overdue posts:

• I am was one of guests on Bob Knorpp’s BeanCast podcast, where we discuss all things marketing. This week’s show included discussion of Lionsgate deal with Google to allow its content on YouTube, the InBev-Budweiser merger, data about the changing U.S. consumer, and more. Please check it out.
• Over at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse had a great idea, asking everyone to post their social media info (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in the comments of a post to create a kind of social media directory of ProBlogger readers. As of this morning, the post had more than 400 members. Go add your information if you want to build your network — comments will close within the next 24 hours.

Is email the new blogging?

I’m serious. For all the hype about email being dead, the vast majority of people online are still using email, using it as much or more than ever, and will continue to use it. Which brings me to my question: Is email the new blogging?

Three examples

• When Jason Calacanis announced he was dropping his blog and instead starting an email list, many people just took it as yet another publicity stunt by the entrepreneur and online showman. But I think Jason’s move to an email list might be symptomatic of a renewed focus on the power of email. So far, his emails have been substantive and interesting, and worth reading.
• Power blogger Darren Rowse, publisher of ProBlogger.com (which I highly recommend), relaunched his email newsletter recently. He’s not giving up his blog, but the newsletter (which I also recommend) has additional content in it beyond the blog.
• Peter Shankman started his “Help a Reporter Out” emails on Facebook, migrated it to its own web site and seems to be swiftly turning it into a business, all in just a few months. The email is designed to connect reporters to sources. Both reporters and sources (or, in my case, the public relations pros who represent potential sources) can sign up and receive the email for free. And I think HARO could turn into a real competitor to ProfNet’s paid service, which does pretty much the same thing. This week HARO crossed the 15,000-member mark.

Why email?

Are people are beginning to see some value in email as an online publishing tool that blogs can’t provide.

For example, with email you have a way of counting and contacting your readers — you have their email addresses.

With email, you only have to worry about getting people to sign up and stay subscribed. No search engine optimization, no linking strategies, minimal design. Sure, you have to think about getting past spam filters, but if people want to receive your email usually that’s not a big problem.

With email you don’t have to moderate comments or “create community.” Though you can create community. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the vlog Wine Library TV, cultivates an army of 80,000 “Vayniacs” in large part by spending 12 hours a day on email. (I can’t find this online, but it’s in the August issue of Wired magazine, on page 112, as a sidebar to the cover story on Julia Allison, which I’ll be blogging about later this week.)

With email, when people opt-in to read it, they’re giving you permission to communicate to them about what you want to — to sell yourself, your products, your services, your ideas. Is that more powerful than the often-passive readership on a blog? I don’t know.

Blogs aren’t dying, but …

This doesn’t mean blogs are dying. But I have a feeling we’re going to see more and more email newsletters, from bloggers and others, and a renewed emphasis on turning email into a really produtive content channel. Although you can subscribe to my blog via email (the little form is there on the right-hand side of the page), I’m not about to start an email newsletter. For now, at least, a blog works for me. But I bet we’re going to see more people launching email newsletters.

What do you think? Are we going to see more of these email publishing ventures? Are there other examples of this I’ve missed? Or am I making too much out of a handful of isolated anecdotes? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it? We’re all talking about social media. We’re all doing social media. Social media is supposed to be the next big thing. But what is it?

Marta Z. Kagan has a pretty much the best explanation I’ve seen:

(via Scott Monty)

So this is it, this is what I’ve been counting down to: The public launch of my new blog, MarkTzk.com.

I’ve been blogging, a little irregularly, and have had my own domain (www.thoughtsignals.com) for nearly eight years, but I felt it was time to try something a little more focused. I’m going to give thoughtsignals, which has always suffered from a lack of focus, a rest. I’ll write more about why I launched this blog, and what I hope to accomplish here, later. And if you’re reading this on thoughtsignals.com, where this has been cross-posted, I encourage you to go over to marktzk.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the daily email update.

Now, on to the contest. In the last couple of weeks as I’ve been counting down on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and thoughtsignals.com, I’ve been surprised by how much attention I’ve gotten. Coworkers, friends and acquaintances have all been guessing what I might be counting down to. (For the record, only Cameron Tew figured it out before today.) People guessed that maybe RLF was going to have a big announcement, or I was going to have a new child, or start my own business, or go skydiving (!), or more. Let me just say that all of you have much more creative, interesting ideas about my life than I do. Thank you. I’m honored.

But I also hope that no one feels let down by the fact that I’m launching a blog. I mean, c’mon, everybody and their mother has a blog.

So, to make this a little more interesting, I’m going to have a contest. You can participate. You could win. And if you do win, you’ll get a $50 Amazon gift card.

One of the topics this blog will focus on is the use of social media in marketing. So I’m looking for a short piece on that. Give me no more than 500 words (remember, longer is not necessarily better) in response to this:

“Social media (including blogging, wikis, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) is better than, worse than or just different than traditional marketing and public relations techniques. Please provide examples, anecdotes, links, etc. to support your point.”

Here are the rules:

1. The total length (excluding the headline) must be 500 words or less. The title/headline doesn’t count toward the total word count.

2. The entry must be posted someplace online that’s publicly accessible — a blog, Facebook page, whatever — and must include a hyperlink back to this post: http://marktzk.com/launch-contest. (If you don’t have a place to post this, one option might be to create a Squidoo page.)

3. Please email the link to your entry to me at marktzk at gmail dot com, and put “MarkTzk.com contest” in the subject line. Your email must reach me by midnight this Friday, July 18.

4. Multiple submissions are fine, but each individual submission must follow these rules. If your entry is a blog posting, each one must be a separate post.

5. As I receive entries I will post the links to them here. So if you have a blog you should get some traffic out of this, too.

6. I reserve the right to disqualify entries that are pornographic, contain hate speech or are otherwise objectionable. (Hey, I believe in free speech, but it’s my contest.)

7. The winner will be announced in one week, next Monday morning, July 25.

Got it? If you have questions, leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. Otherwise, gentle readers, start your keyboards.

And even if you don’t want to enter the contest, I hope you’ll point your feedreader at that big orange RSS icon in the upper right hand corner and subscribe to the feed, or put your email address into the little subscribe box over to the right to receive the blog posts via email (just one email a day).

David Griner at The Social Path raises a good question: Are blogs still good places for conversation?

Sure, some blogs still spark heated debate and commenting frenzies. But the rapid expansion of social media has left us with so many ways to communicate, it can be hard to keep a conversation in one place.

On the off chance I post something interesting here on the blog, someone might post a comment. Or they could talk about it on Twitter, a service that essentially lets you post a brief instant message to the public. Or someone might react on FriendFeed, a site that tells you about anything your friends are posting online. Or maybe the reader will just send me an instant message, or an e-mail, or a message through Facebook… In the time it would take me to list all the options, 25 new social media services would probably be launched.

I think that blogs themselves are still very useful (otherwise, why would I be writing this?), but that the conversation online has become more distributed. And that’s OK — it means more people have more opportunities to be involved. But it also creates challenges. Go over to David’s blog to read his post and my full comment to see what I mean. Then give him some attention and tell us what you think in his comments.

Here’s a round-up of links that ought to be of use for anyone marketing online:

• Get the Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II via free download.
• Chris Brogan shows you to organize for more efficient, effective blogging.
• Skelliewag explains how to get some link love from Digg.
• Christopher S. Penn says you can take advantage of those RSS scrapers that steal your blog posts to actually bring more traffic to your site.

Please let me know if you find these links useful.